Charity Shops

Salvaged

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We get a lot of history books into the Oxfam shop, but not many written by hand.

And though perhaps not actually strictly a history book, it is a book which is a part of history.

This nicely (but now rubbed and faded on the outside,) marbled book holds a record of wartime salvage off the Sussex coast.

Before your mind wanders to a romantic story of villagers pillaging loot under the cover of darkness as the waves of the channel swish along a hidden slice of coastline, stop it.

This is a series of terse listings of what, where and who from 1943 to 1947.

Written, I am thinking, by men who were charged with creating a log to keep officialdom happy or at least undemanding, or just to have a record of what appeared on ‘their’ shores.

The title page is blank so they ignored the boxes asking who they were  – and if you read it carefully, you will see that perhaps officialdom was looking for a few more details. 

They knew what was found, where and who carried out the salvage but as to what it was worth, who was paid what as a result or who the owners were – it is all a mystery to us and perhaps them.

There is different handwriting as we move through the book and the years – some more legible and some a fraction less terse, but nowhere are we getting the backstory.

What ship shed its load of rubber? There were various amounts of rubber found at various dates, in places from ‘ bottom of sea lane, Angmering-on-Sea’ to five yards below the High Water Mark outside the Pheonix Club, Alma Hotel, Middleton-on-Sea, and one bale of unmarked rubber on the foreshore of the Craigwell Estate.

I have no idea who was filling in these entries and what official capacity they held, but we do get an idea if who was doing the salvaging.

Quite a number were Canadian soldiers – not entirely surprisingly as there were a lot in Sussex and presumably were allowed onto the fortified beach when ordinary locals weren’t.

But there were salvaging civilians including E W Morris, Lorry Driver, 50 Highfield Road, Bognor Regis.

And, Richard Davie, Police Constable, Police Cottage, East Preston, Sussex.

J O’Connell of Admiralty Road, Felpham salvaged ‘Paraffin Wax approx 150 lbs no marks.’

The names don’t repeat – with the exception of Constable Davie which might point to locals handing stuff over to him whether completely to not – so presumably these were not professional salvagers unless there was a significant number of them vying for stuff all along the Sussex coast.

I am assuming that most of what was found was flotsam (being the stuff that was not deliberately thrown overboard) as opposed to jetsam which was, you won’t be surprised to hear, was jettisoned.

And there are other more interesting finds than rubber or paraffin so, if you have the time and energy to read on.

It seems as if the entries all refer to things which ended up on the shore and indeed quite a lot is listed as being pulled above the high water mark.

But more portable stuff was ‘taken to a place of safety’ and interestingly, that place is rarely identified.

I could run away with the idea that places of safety might include shed, kitchen cupboards, or under counters but there is the official record – however thin and terse – of what arrived on land so presumably the salvagers were an honest lot.

For instance:

There are a number of dinghies, and a canoe complete with oars.

With a couple of exceptions, none of the boats had names. Perhaps that was common in the war, but where did they come from? What happened to the people in them? Why were people out in dinghies, or indeed canoes in the channel during a war?

Finally, perhaps the saddest entries are those of ships’ life rafts

Hopefully, we will find someone who wants to research/appreciate/understand this brief record of an aspect of Sussex coastal wartime history – if we do, I will let you know.

More than books

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There are all sorts of strange things donated to Oxfam bookshops and recently we seem to have had our fair share. 

I have covered this theme before but do you know what, it still keeps happening. All these were donated in the last week.

Here is a microscope, from we think, the mid to late 1800s.

Here is a box lined with what I think (but don’t know) is Japanese script/newspaper – but from what era? 

A pair of shell casings from WW1 – not trench art, just casings, presumably brought home and you have to wonder what was the story behind bringing them back.

The box was donated by a fellow volunteer who won it at an auction at the Australian High Commissioner’s event in Singapore many years ago – as you do.

He (the volunteer, not the commissioner) told me it was the box that had held the surrender papers from the Japanese navy at the end of WWII – but he was joking. 

He had no idea what/when/why it was.

I would like to know what the script says – it is the classified adds from the Tokyo Times in September 1970 or a confirmation this was owned by the under secretary to the under secretary of the Emperor sending out a secret message to Matthew Perry – the first foreigner ‘allowed” into Japan for 200 years?

So, what to do with them?

‘You can do a Japanese table display,’ said my manager.

But we would need Japanese books…

And yes, the next donation she sorted was a bag full of Japanese books – there are some book gods out there….

As for the microscope. It has no name on it so not an absolute treasure, but a volunteer who knows about cameras (close enough) was called in to check it out. 

It was probably a school microscope dating from the mid to late 1800s. Brass, solid, in a box, used and re-used by schoolboys (no doubt, no girls) and who knows whether it inspired a child into science where he (undoubtedly) did some good science work which is benefiting us today….

And, our volunteer found out one like it – for sale on E-bay. Ours has ‘ original patina’ as they say on Antiques Roadshow, but that one was all polished up.

He was sneery about the polishing and thought the original condition would please someone who wanted the original/ripe for rescue microscope –  and very sure that ours will make more than the £94 the other one went for on E-bay.

By serendipitous coincidence, we had already been gathering books to do a window on science and technology and now we have a star artefact/prop.

The microscope will be in an Oxfam window near me in the next few weeks and there will be a lot of fingers crossed hoping that a microscope restorer looking for a new project will be walking around Petersfield…….

Well, we will see and I will tell you.

In the serendipity of an Oxfam bookshop, we had already been collecting books for a window of science and technology through the ages – so the microscope will be out star (non-book) performer.

As for the shell casings.

Well they are not crafted into trench art and so our best hope is that the metal might be worth something – or/and, fingers crossed people, there is someone out there ( book-shopping in Petersfield) who wants some undecorated WW1 memorabilia.

And some William Morris Sanderson fabrics and a pair of curtains.I thought they’d gone out, in and back out of fashion, but turns out they are still worth a bit.

Arts and Crafts, I thought. 

Well, of course, I hear you saying.

But what I plan/hope/can to do with them is for another time.

Russians in America

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As I have mentioned before, ad nauseam you might think, coincidence is a major part of the enjoyment of working in an Oxfam bookshop.

These are rather esoteric coincidences, but that’s what you get sometimes so buckle up.

Someone rang to ask if we wanted some volumes published by the Haklyut Society and I said yes. 

I had seen a few before and know them to be nothing-if-not-niche history books. And worth putting online.

They came in in pristine condition and the donor admitted he had not read all of them from cover to cover.

Now, given that among the donation were three volumes of The Artic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger – I am not entirely surprised.

( Though I was surprised to note this must have been where Phillip Pullman got his name for the artic explorer Scoresby in his Northern Lights Trilogy. 

Are you keeping up?)

Now, if you were thinking, ‘Well, they’ll be sat on the shelves for a while.’ You are wrong, they had sold before I got back to the shop to take a photo for this blog and to prove I was telling the truth about them.

Anyway, there were also two volumes of Russian California.

So,

‘Sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast.Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia’s Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.’

I am not sure how you would get two volumes out of that but as the Haklyut Society publishes ‘scholarly editions of primary records of voyages and travels’ maybe there were more bored settling Russian sailors writing diaries than one might expect.

And they seem to be convinced that the Russians came earlier and left later than Wikipedia thought.

So, I can hear you asking, who was this Haklyut who inspired this society of arcane travel history books publishing society?

Well, first of all his name is pronounced Hak’loowt which I found good to know as I had been struggling with various alternatives.

No, not Dutch as you might think.

Born and bred in Herefordshire – that was a surprise (and indeed the area I grew up in, by coincidence.)

Their family taking their name from the ‘Forest of Cluid in Radnorland’ apparently.

Richard’s father was a dealer in furs and was a member of the Worshipful Company of (aptly-named) Skinners.

Richard had a good education, got ordained, was around in Elizabeth and James I’s court and the was a significant promoter of the colonisation of America and was the chief promoter of a petition for ‘letters patent’ to colonise Virginina.

So, now you are feeling a lot more educated on Haklyut than you were an hour ago. No, it is fine, don’t thank me.

Anyway, on the same day that the Haklyut books came in, our champion donations-sorter came upstairs with a map.

And there it is showing Alaska ‘owned’ by the Russians.

The map was printed in 1865, just two years before the Americans bought it for $7.2m dollars. See below.

Now I disappeared down a rabbit hole of the history of Russians in Alaska and below is a short summary of what I found out – but feel free to think that you might not need to have even a very short version of this corner of history.

By the time the sale treaty was signed, Russians had been in Alaska for 125 years.

In 1741, Vitus Bering (he of the straits fame) was spurred on/ordered by Peter The Great to find out what happened after the end of Siberia. 

One voyage failed but on the second one they found the edge of Alaska. Bering died of scurvy but his ship mates returned loaded up with skins of sea otters, foxes and seals – and whetted the fur-appetite of Russian dealers.

So, the Russians headed back to Alaska asap.

Alaska wasn’t empty of people. There were an estimated 100,000 native people living there.

There were some trading arrangements set up but relations were not great once the Russians started taking leaders’ children as hostages and using their more powerful weaponry, for example.

On the Aleutian Islands, again for example, a pre-Russian population of about 17,000 plummeted to 1,500 as a result of disease, capture or fighting.

And they brought over Russian Orthodox missionaries to do what missionaries tend to do. And, the most visible trace of the Russian colonial period in contemporary Alaska is the nearly 90 Russian Orthodox parishes with a membership of over 20,000 men, women, and children, almost exclusively indigenous people. 

In search of somewhere just a little bit more clement and less demanding that you were a very rugged man, the Russians headed south and set up a trading relationship with the Spanish and Fort Ross in 1812 – just 90 miles north of San Francisco Bay. 

Fort Ross in its early days

Russian Orthodox Church Fort Ross

But they were half a globe away from St Petersburg, it was tough, cold and 

‘By the middle of the 19th century, profits from Russia’s North American colonies were in steep decline. Competition with the British Hudson’s Bay Company had brought the sea otter to near extinction, while the population of bears, wolves, and foxes on land was also nearing depletion. Faced with the reality of periodic Native American revolts, the political ramifications of the Crimean War, and unable to fully colonise the Americas to their satisfaction, the Russians concluded that their North American colonies were too expensive to retain. Eager to release themselves of the burden, the Russians sold Fort Ross in 1842, and in 1867, after less than a month of negotiations, the United States accepted Emperor Alexander II‘s offer to sell Alaska. The purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million ended Imperial Russia’s colonial presence in the Americas.’ Wikipedia

So the wildlife and local people were killed off. And, of course, that is not just the prerogative of Russians. See also America, the British Empire and many, many others.

And one man’s ‘revolt’ is another person’s definition of fighting to reclaim their own land, customs, rights. 

Serendipity and Coincidence

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It has rarely been a time when serendipity and coincidence have worked out so well for our Oxfam bookshop.

I have said before, and no doubt will say again, one of the delights of volunteering in an Oxfam shop is serendipity – you can’t order stuff, you can only open a box, delve through a carrier bag, and find what you find, look at something which makes you smile.

This, dear reader, is a long list so don’t say you weren’t warned.

So, where will we start.

Someone came into the shop and asked for books on weather. 

He said his family had decided not only would they shop for Christmas gifts in charity shops, they had a theme – weather.

We we always, always have books on weather – clouds formations, climate change etc etc – but not this time.

Three of us scoured the shop upstairs and down, but nothing. 

Of course, after Christmas we have had lots of books which would fit the bill, but nothing at the time – sorry customer.

On the other hand, here is a good news story.

So, a couple came in, the same day, and asked for for an old  leather-covered bible. Not a request we get often.

And we often have one.

But not this time.

Apparently, their son had confirmed as a Christian as an adult and he loved second-hand stuff, shopping in charity shops etc.

And, they were not in a great hurry so I took their phone number, and said I would let them know if I found one.

One day, after the planning and work ( bearing in mind we have been doing this since August) and whoo-ha of Christmas, I had time to set out, clear out, rootle through the stash of ‘old and interesting’ books and found a bible dictionary which was not only leather bound, but presentation bound.

(That means, just in case you don’t know, it was bound especially to present to a student with a presentation certificate pasted inside. And it had marbled boards and page ends – no I don’t have a picture so you need to Google what that means if you are interested.)

And, sorry I did not take any photos.

It seemed to me to be a long shot of what the customers wanted ,but called them anyway saying they were under no pressure to buy, just a thought.

They turned up about an hour later, were delighted, paid twice what we had priced it at, and bought a coffee-table book (we had had for a very long time) on the most beautiful bibles in the world.

Later he sent me a text message saying how delighted they were and how much they had appreciated the ‘effort’ we had made to get what they wanted.

 As ever, there is something special about uniting a book with someone who is going to really appreciate it.

Next, serendipity and coincidence is more prosaic.

So, after Christmas I was thinking about that table to out out and I thought of cookery – what a surprise, my friends might say – and had a few old books and magazines relating to cookery which I thought might make a (slightly) interesting table.

I was upstairs sorting all this stuff out to fill a table when the volunteer downstairs let me know there had been a(another) donation.

When I abandoned my task and went downstairs, I found the donation included a copper kettle, a kitchen bowl, a set of cheese knives.

Sorted.

Finally, and thank you for keeping going this far, the end is nigh.

Sometimes I have a plan weeks in advance about table displays but sometimes I come in on a  Monday and wonder how I am going to make it work.

On one of these Mondays recently, I decided to put out books that were set in different countries.

Of course there were a few travel books, but also novels, history, etc etc. 

Now, there is nothing as useful as signalling your rather arcane theme than a prop and hey ho, someone, about twenty minutes later, donated a globe and some foreign coins. Thank you whoever you are.

And on the same day that it was announced Ronald Blythe had died at the age of 100 – most famously the author of Akenfield. Guess what I found stashed behind a pile of Jane Austen and John Betjamin…..

This is nearly the end.

Sometimes you have a donation which is not so much a delightful, serendipitous addition to your plan, as something you have to take a deep breath and think how on earth are we going to make this work.

A horse’s saddle.

Well, yes that was a bit of a surprise as a donation because it is not often we, as a book and music shop, get a saddle as a donation.

Apparently, someone brought it in and said her mother, a rider, had died and asked her daughter to give one each of her saddles to three charity shops in the town. (have to say, I have not seen saddles popping up all over town…)

So, instead of getting a bonus for a pre-planned display, we have had to build one around it. We have a lovely display of countryside and the saddle is front and centre.

God only knows what we do with it if it doesn’t sell – us volunteers, are so fed up of moving it out of the way in order to go to the loo.

And just as we thought we had sorted one large, in the way, unusual donation, we got a guitar.

One of our great volunteers was called in to tell us what it was worth. Some calling around and he came up with a price – £175 – a big deal for us.

So, my plans for the table were jettisoned smartly and here’s hoping it will sell before we have to drill holes in the wall and ‘erect’ a guitar holder.

Fingers crossed we have a guitar playing horse rider shopping in Petersfield this week…..

A Day Of Coins

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Serendipity is part of the charm of working in the Oxfam bookshop. Usually it as about books but yesterday, it was about a remarkable you man, coins and stamps.

Now I don’t often work a Saturday afternoon but I have to say it is always interesting – a different demographic from a weekday, and busier – less time to do the titivating, tidying, sorting stuff that you can do Monday to Friday.

( As ever, a long-read warning but it is a heartening story so you might want to carry on at least for a bit.)

Anyway, there I am at the till with two Duke of Edinburgh Award young people doing their volunteering stints when in walks a young person of say 13 years old. ( I am surrounded by young people and it is making me feel old….)

The DofE young women are doing books, but he is not interested in books, he asks me if we have any pre-decimal coins, foreign coins and/or stamps.

Well, as it happens we did have a load of coins which a lovely volunteer ( at the other end of the age spectrum) had sorted into organza bags. 

Last year we had unearthed a stash shoved under a workbench in the shop and which had been there for some years – and we sold them in aforementioned bags.

People bought them to put sixpences or threepences into their Christmas puddings, or bags of old pennies to ‘amaze’ their grandchildren, or foreign banknotes to play Monopoly with. We did well.

In case you need to see what the pences are:

So, she and I had decided to do the same this year and she waded through bags and bags and sorted them into pre-decimal British coins, foreign coins, silver coloured, brass coloured, etc etc. They were in a box upstairs.

‘Well,’ I said to the young man I will call Tom, ‘ We do have some. Do you want to have a look?’

He did and spent more than an hour sitting on our shop sofa, riffling through and telling me – and indeed customers – about when silver sixpences were phased out (1947), what the print runs of Penny Red stamps meant in terms of value, pulling out the incredibly light ( probably made from Aluminium) coins from Romania and much more.

He told me/us that his grandfather was a coin and stamp dealers and left Tom his collection – now stored in a large container – which is now working through.

Some of the stamps are now at Gibbons, he has sold some of his own and his grandfather’s collection and used the first money to buy a dog – but, he admitted, his Mum does most of the dog walking and feeding. Well what a surprise.

Customers came and went and Tom carried on, still telling me stuff in between me taking money from book buyers.

At one point, there was him, me and just one customer who said, ‘ I have a bag of old coins and I have never know what to do with it. Could I bring it here and and if there is anything valuable, I am sure you will identify it and Oxfam can benefit?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom and I together.

So, he eventually left taking some stamps and coins to research, and coins he had bought.

‘Thank you so much for trusting me with these,’ he said.

‘Well, I have your phone number and I do trust you. And thank you for an interesting afternoon,’ I said.

‘I’ll be back,’ he said – and I am sure he will.

Book buyers kept me busy until almost closing time when a young woman came in and said,’ This is a long shot but do you take old and foreign coins?”

‘Yes, we do’ I said and she gave me the last donation of the day.

It was indeed a day of coins.

A Day of Reuniting

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If you want a good Oxfam story, this is one of my better ones. 

But dear reader, there is what we called as journalists, a long dropped intro.

Which means you have to wade through some stuff before you get to the nub of the story.

Here are a few things I have said before and all of them happened today:

1)If you wait long enough there will be every printed thing/book/pamphlet turn up in your Oxfam shop – there is something printed on every topic you could ever imagine.

2)There is a good home for some special books – places they belong.

3) It is a such a buzz to pick out something dusty and strange and make 2) happen and get some money for Oxfam, and make people happy.

Well, of course not every printed item turned up today, but at the bottom of a book of not very interesting books, something really unusual turned up. 

How it turned up in an Oxfam shop in Petersfield, I will never know and sometimes as a book sorter, I really wish I could hear the story of the donation. But we very rarely do – and I mean very rarely. 

After all, someone comes in with a few boxes of books and if we are lucky we can ask them to Gift Aid them ( if they do we get 25% extra from the government on every book we sell), and they are on their way. 

Often they are bringing in books from aged/dead/going-into-a-care-home parents and really haven’t looked at what there is.

Anyway, enough delay, let me tell you what I found:

This is the particulars for a major estate sale in 1926.

Now, I couldn’t find another one for sale – which needless to say dear reader, means it is rare and a rather interesting read.

A bit of research, thanks Wikipedia, meant that I found out the estate was bought by Colonel Edward Clayton from the Wills family – indeed should that be ringing a vague bell, they were the founders of Imperial Tobacco Company and ‘in 1966 was the family with the largest number of millionaires in the British Isles, with 14 members having left fortunes in excess of one million pounds since 1910.’

In 1994 Edward’s son sold it on to Ralph and Suzanne Nicolson who now run the house as what looks like a very nice indeed holiday let. 

Clearly, a phone call needed to be made.

It turns out the family had tried to buy the a copy of the particulars but weren’t successful so they are said ‘Yes please’ to buying our donation.

Now, that is what I call a good day’s reuniting.

Books & Covers

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So, if you are still with me, lets’ go to Warren Hastings.

He who went through an impeachment trial brought on by Edmund Burke and whose biography appeared in our shop.

Malleson’s Life of Warren Hastings bound by the Relfe Brothers with a presentation binding but no presentation certificate.

If you want a translation of that paragraph let me tell you a bit more.

Usually with a binding like this, you would usually get a printed presentation certificate pasted inside with teacher handwriting saying something like ‘to George Robertson for excellent marks in history.’

Now, the Refle Brothers are really well known quality book-binders but can you find their story/history on Google? – well actually no.

No Wikipedia page – and yes I do give Jimmy Wales some money for all the use I make of his site.

So, if you look you can find books for sale with Relfe bidding and they are pricey, but you can’t find out anything about them – or at least, I haven’t yet.

The page edges are marbled and I have flicked them to see if you do that a picture appears. If that was the case we would have a while lot more money to look forward to. 

So next time you see a book in a charity shop with marbled edges, just give them a flick and happily pay the money they are asking.

Now, you often get good bindings on really boring books and I am not sure that the boy ( usually) who got it was terribly excited about reading it.

Indeed the copy we have looks pretty much unread….

But see the hand-tooled gilt and the spine bands and the original marbled insides. Nice, very nice.

Now back to Warren Hastings.

So Edmund Burke took two days to read the charges in Hastings’ impeachment. Mainly they were related to embezzlement, extortion and coercion.

The House of Commons sat for 148 days over seven years to hear this case.

In 1795 the House of Lords acquitted him and the East India Company, for whom Hastings worked, gave him a pension of £4,000 per year backdated to when he arrived back in England.

Hastings said the legal fees had pretty much bankrupted him but then he had lived in ‘considerable style’ in his London house throughout the trial……

And in 1788 he bought an estate in Gloucestershire for £54,000 had the house remodelled classical and Indian decoration, and gardens landscaped, and re-built its Norman church……not that living on lentils and no heating then. ( See also Rushi Sunak, again.)

Meanwhile, the East India Company was not just about trading.

Originally chartered as the “Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies”,the company rose to account for half of the world’s trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium. 

The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. (Wikipedia)

(Should you need to know more see my Best Beloved’s one-day-to-be-published history of Europe book.)

The EIC was either the beginnings of the glorious British Empire on which the sun never set, or the rapacious company implying all sorts of greedy, coercive, pseudo-rulers who imposed, stole, acted with impunity and had little interest in recognising they were not in charge – and indeed they became in charge.

I leave you to decide.

According to a site called History Reclaimed, ‘The impeachment of Warren Hastings was an act of imperial soul-searching unparalleled in history. Although Hastings was eventually acquitted, his trial was a warning to all future imperial proconsuls that they too could be called to account by the British Parliament. 

He was the first British Governor-General who launched India’s cultural renaissance way back in the 1780s.  Of all Britain’s imperial proconsuls, Warren Hastings was undoubtedly the most curious and learned about Indian culture and famously declared: “I love India a little more than my own country”.  

He became fluent in Bengali and had a good working knowledge of Urdu and Persian, the languages of the Mughal elite.  One of his most enlightened acts as Governor-General was to promote the founding of the Calcutta Asiatic Society in 1784.’

And, according to Wikipedia, ‘He and Robert Clive are credited with laying the foundation of the British Empire in India.

Getting a bit of an idea where Malleson is coming from.

Malleson was certainly on his side – a hagiography I would suggest but then with a Relfe binding, someone is going to buy this book because they have judged it by its cover.

A lot of time to research

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This is about a book from 1796 which has arrived in Oxfam Petersfield in 2022.

And about a coincidence.

Be warned, there is a lot of this – I got a mild dose of Covid so was at home with time….

But at least this time there are some pictures.

Ignorance of the provenance of book is the lot of a charity bookshop. Indeed, I am not even clear which of our volunteers, put it aside for me to look at.

Anyway, we have it, and what an interesting book it is. (Value, you Antiques Roadshow aficionados, will come later.)

So this is a bound volume of three letters by Edmund Burke and for those of you who think who? Here is some info – actually, quite a lot of info.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke#Later_life

And here are a couple of quotes which may chime:

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’

And:

‘Nobody made a greater mistake than he would did nothing because he could do only a little.’

Obviously, he was no feminist, but apparently he was anti-slavery.

He was also, depending on who you read, a founder of Conservatism and/or ‘a wet and a Eurosceptic’ according to the Beaconsfield Historical Society.

He wanted to be the Earl Of Beaconsfield and George III wanted him to be, but Burke’s son died so he couldn’t have a peerage. Life peers were only introduced in 1958 so if you didn’t have a male line to take it on, you didn’t get it.

What he did get was a handsome pension which was criticised by the Earls of Bedford and Lauderdale hence this:

His argument was that at least he had earned his pension by unstinting public service whereas the earls got their money by inheritance alone.

‘I was not, like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked and dandled into a Legislator’

And he wrote in one of our letters, ‘Loose libels ought to be passed by silence and contempt.’ 

Meanwhile in a 1771 letter to the Duke of Richmond, Burke wrote that ‘persons in your station of life ought to have long views. You people of great families and hereditary trusts and fortunes are not like such as I am … we are but annual plants that perish with our season and leave no sort of trace behind.’

Oh yes, he had a good turn of phrase.

And according to Martin Greenberg, who also has a good turn of phrase:

In Letter to a Noble Lord (1796), Burke replied with a crushing force to two whippersnapper peers, obscenely rich enthusiasts of the philosophes and the French Revolution, who had attacked him for accepting a pension from the crown. He set his lifetime of accomplishments against the nothing of their juvenile efforts, his defense of their inherited rank and acres against their coquetting with a power whose universal ambition, if it were able to reach across the water, would have swept away all that they were and owned with a grin. Burke’s prose–sober-paced, weighty, powerful to the point of being overbearing–has always close behind its argumentation a reserve of poetic energy which now gleams, now flashes, and now, as in this letter, explodes in a fireworks of dazzling metaphors, a storm of epical-satirical language that tosses around the duke and earl, great galleons of the nobility, like little cockboats. ‘

Now I am not directly making any comparisons with current British politics but if you want to, be my guest.

Our book was published in 1796, the year before Burke died. 

Other things that were happening in 1796 include:

Jane Austen starts writing Pride and Prejudice, 

George Washington gave his farewell address warning against partisan politics ( that worked then), 

The British government began work on a 40 acre site at Norman Cross near Peterborough to become the world’s first prisoner of war camp,( who knew, and might need some more investigation)

At Christmas 1796, the French Navy nearly landed an army of 15,000 troops at Bantry Bay in Ireland. 

And Napoleon was appointed head of the French Army in Italy which was to have some significant ramifications….

Hence: 

Breathe easier, I am not going to give you a history of the Napoleonic Wars (though my Best Beloved can if you are interested.)

Burke wasn’t a fan of the French Revolution on the grounds because of its ‘origins and the class of people who were the driving force behind the Revolution’. 

Basically, he didn’t believe that the French urban working class, or the peasantry, could be trusted with legislative or political powers.

He had the view that only the ‘educated’ could be reliably left to run any country.

So, you can get the text of these letters online and you can buy them in the original but very rarely, infact, very, very rarely can you buy one from 1796 printed on such good quality paper – and in an original  binding. Most of them have lost their binding or were never bound at all – just get them out there, the printers must have said.

The paper is impressive. Very little foxing ( that’s the brown spots on the pages of old books) and it feels strong and thick and well cut, and well bound – impressive for such an old book.

We looked for a paper watermark but there wasn’t one. And I found out that this ‘book’ went into 11 editions in 1796. That is a lot of editions, and though the print run would have been the kind of print run were are used to, that is a lot of books.

And there are five raised gilt bands with gilt titling on the spine and gilt banding on the front and back boards.

Interestingly, at the bottom of each page there is the first word, or part of the word, of the next page. I have not seen this before, but maybe that is my ignorance.

It is also justified which means that the left and right margins are the same – and means that words are sometime broken up, or spaces are stretched to make the text fit the margins.

(That can make reading hard on the eye because different spacing seems disjointed. Our book, I have to say had a very good typesetter because it is easy to read.)

Is it about making sure the pages are in the right order? Possibly, but they are numbered.

Well, now you know a bit about how books are described online…..

And all that has been taught to me by someone who knows amore about books than I will ever do and who is the man who comes in ( when called up) and tells me what to look at, what to reasearch, what to learn…. and teaches me to expand what I know from the back of a postage stamp’s worth to, oh maybe a small postcard.

Waiting for the valuation? Well because it is bound and in great condition we are hoping for £275.

Maybe it will be sold asap or maybe it will take some time and be less than that – that’s the way it works.

Now, if you have got to the end of this and still have a memory of a mention of a coincidence….

So, Burke got his pension (I gather £2,500) in no small part for his work as Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on East India Company Affairs.

And he impeached Warren Hastings.

So when I went into the box of books that have been put aside for me to look at, under the Burke letters I found a handsome book – a biography of Warren Hastings….

I have no idea whether they were donated together or this is one of those coincidences that happen in the life of a bookshop when no providence can be found.

More of that next time.

And, we have another book from 1796, The History of America – perhaps more on that too.

More Maps

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So finally an update on the maps – yes plural – but be warned there is a wince coming on. And a long read so, as ever, brace yourself.

Just a quick re-cap. 

In our unearthing of stuff the now-resigned manager had left stuffed under, in and around the behind-the-scenes parts of our shop, we found a lovely old map of Windsor and the 25 miles around.

We were very excited about this map and why not, it is a lovely old thing.

Anyway, as part of the shop’s lucky hinterland, I have been in touch with a man who has considerable expertise himself but as well as that, has his own hinterland of experts who can tell us what we have.

(We are lucky to have him and the occasional chat about what he has been collecting, things found in junk and charity shops, and what I have brought to him – are much appreciated.)

Brace yourselves, it is not always good news.

So, if you came across a map from the 1700s, printed and then hand-coloured with the local boundaries and the size of a smallish kitchen table, you might think you were on to a good thing.

But, apparently it was worth no more than £200. Our hinterland expert found someone in his hinterland and that man knew what he was talking about.

I thought a conversation with a local auctioneer might have be coming on, but decided to list it on Oxfam online first, just to see…

Meanwhile, more unearthing found us this.

Also from the 1700s but, according to our new and excellent expert, re-backed onto so later canvas.

Now a map of the Loire is unlikely to sell in the shop. We have relatively few customers who own a second home in the area.

I will list it on Oxfam online and see what happens.

Are you ready for the wince?

OK, so the lovely, hand coloured, printed as part of George III’s demand for accurate mileage between turnpikes, showing all sorts of interesting things including ” remarkable hills” Windsor map:

I did list it on Oxfam Online for £200.

And Oxfam decided to have (another) sale. Everything listed for more than three months got reduced. 50% and then 70% and so our beautiful map went to someone for just £75.

I was gutted.

Now I should have moved it out of the listings so that the sale would pass it by and that was something I failed to do – I would also have had a lot of books too to move – books don’t sell like clothes.

(Somehow, I thought that an old map, one as lovely as our’s would be exempt from the sale algorithm but that was me being distracted and not getting to check the comms about when the sale was sorted.

There were the 14 questions other volunteers had when I started the day, and the 20 things on my list of what to do that day, and the fact we needed milk for tea and coffee that I was making for us, so I went to get it, how to get an order for stationery when I don’t have a password to get into the system because I am a volunteer and not staff, the chat someone wants about the next few window displays, emptying the indoor bins and calling Biffa again about why they haven’t emptied the outside bins, someone texting me to say they can’t make their shift, who is going to cover Saturday afternoon……….. Excuses I know, but sometimes the urgent take over from the the important.)

Many books need to sit there quietly waiting for the collector of tractor books, or old maps, or special bindings, or the small publisher from the 19th century or or or…..

Of course, maybe we would never had sold it for £200 and yes, of course £75 all adds to Oxfam’s ability to help people for whom £75 is a vast amount.

I do know that, but I still think we might have got more.

Finally, on maps we have a map of Hampshire – yes Petersfield is in Hampshire – from 1821.

So, our expert got his experts to give us a valuation, and it is not much.

Think £30.

But, I am on a roll to recover from the Windsor map and I think there might be someone walking past the shop who might be willing to pay £75 for such a lovely thing.

We will try it and see.

But before I go, a bit about this map.

So, in 1821, Bournemouth didn’t exist according to this map, but according to Wikipedia:

‘Before it was founded in 1810 by Lewis Tregonwell, the area was a deserted heathland occasionally visited by fishermen and smugglers. Initially marketed as a health resort, the town received a boost when it appeared in Augustus Granville‘s 1841 book, The Spas of England.[1] Bournemouth’s growth accelerated with the arrival of the railway, and it became a town in 1870.’

They are both interesting men – worth a bit of a look.

And West Sussex where I live looks a bit like ‘There be dragons country.’

I have to say, that the dragons round here these days probably drive 4×4 and have swingy blonde ponytails but can breathe quite a lot of fire if you don’t give them room on country lanes and immediately move your Citroen Picasso into the ditch. Just saying.

Hundreds by the way are administrative divisions –

The origin of the division of counties into hundreds is described by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as “exceedingly obscure”. It may once have referred to an area of 100 hides. (In the early Anglo-Saxon period a hide was the amount of land farmed by and required to support a peasant family, but by the eleventh century in many areas it supported four families.[1]) Alternatively the hundred may have been an area originally settled by one “hundred” men at arms, or the area liable to provide one “hundred” men under arms.[2] (Note that in earlier times the number term “hundred” can itself be unclear, meaning the “short” hundred (100) or in some contexts the long hundred of 120.) Wikipedia.

And why on earth would Odiham (pronounced Odiam, in case you are planning a visit) be the point from which all distances were measured?

Odiham is the home of the Royal Air Force Chinook heavy lift helicopter fleet and I can attest to that because they fly over us – apparently learning how to go up and over the Downs as practice for some hills elsewhere.

Maybe also taking senior military types to golf, who knows…

But I gather that Odiham was equidistance from Winchester and Windsor.

Now, Winchester has a long history of power and clergy.

I have never been to that village but what a great address that would be. ‘Yes, itchings plural and no, I don’t know what the problem was.’

And well, Windsor, need I say more.

I’ll let you know if we get the £75.

A Witter About Birds And Books

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It has been a while so I think I will gently witter about birds and Oxfam, to get back into the swing of things. 

So, lots of photos coming up and a few tales attached. ( It turns out to be quite hard to pun in text..)

(Mind you once I get back into the flow, for those of you interested in old books, I have a corker.)

So, good illustrations, plates, wood engravings, photos, diagrams, unfolding maps still attached, can add a lot to the value of a book.

Sometimes though the book is in such bad condition, or worth so little, you (well, I ) start to think about taking out the pictures and framing them because they will be worth more.

Now, as I have said before I would not desecrate a book in good condition and worth more than a few quid by ripping out the illustrations – no, I wouldn’t – but sometimes it is tempting.

So, a long time ago we got a lovely book, falling apart and the illustrations were by the Detmold twins who went on to be famous artists but at this point were teenagers – yes indeed – and living near London Zoo and they painted after their frequent visits.

The Best Beloved took the plates/paintings/illustrations and framed them – and we sold them for a handsomely bigger profit than we would have made from the badly injured book. 

And this week, I have something which I am handing over to the BB to take apart and frame the images.

We have had an exhibition catalogue donated and sometimes they are worth quite a bit. Not this one – say £3.99.

But, I think we will be able to sell framed images.

Now tell me that these are not saleable when they are framed – and I am thinking we have at least say six or seven and we can sell them for say £5.99 each.

(And by the way, that is why it is called a Secretary Bird – quills coming out of its head. You have to be of a certain age even to know what a quill is…)

There are a lot of ‘say’s’ in this plan but I am willing to give it a go and see where we get to.

If you are interested, I will let you know.

This next book is a big book with lovely illustrations so I expected it to be worth, say, £5.99 and for someone to buy it. Neither was true. It is worth, according to Abe Books, £0.77p plus postage….

And despite me putting it in the shop at various times, in various displays, it hasn’t sold.

But this is one, I am not willing to break up – yet.

So, next time you are in a second-hand book shop, have a flip through the books that might look all too boring on the outside and find yourself lost in the details of a great engraving or the colour burst and design of an image or a pull out map which will tell you how to get from A to B in Berlin just after the war, or find a pre-Beck underground map – appreciate the delight of art and design in a book.